Table of Contents

• Part One: Gregorio Cortez, the Legend and the Life
  • Chapter I: The Country
    • Nuevo Santander
    • The Rio Grande people
    • Mier, the Alamo, and Goliad
    • The Texas Rangers
  • Chapter II: The Legend
    • How they sing El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez
    • How Gregorio Cortez came to be in the county of El Carmen
    • RomÁn's horse trade and what came of it
    • How Gregorio Cortez rode the little sorrel mare all of five hundred miles
    • How El Teco sold Gregorio Cortez for a morral full of silver dollars
    • How Gregorio Cortez went to prison, but not for killing the sheriffs
    • How President Lincoln's daughter freed Gregorio Cortez, and how he was poisoned and died
  • Chapter III: The Man
    • A likable young man
    • The sheriff is interpreted to death
    • The long walk
    • The Battle of Belmont
    • The long ride
    • The capture
    • Aftermath
    • The battle of the courts
    • "Through thick and thin"
    • The pardon
    • The last days
    • Epilogue
  • Chapter IV: The Hero's Progress
    • Theme and variations
    • Fact and fancy
    • Cortez as a folk hero
• Part Two: El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez, a Ballad of Border Conflict
  • Chapter V: The Corrido on the Border
    • Before the corrido
    • The corrido century
    • The earliest Border corridos
    • Ballads borrowed from Greater Mexico
    • Border outlaw corridos
    • The Borderer against the fuereÑo
    • The Border Mexican against the rinches
    • The corrido of border conflict as a dominant form
  • Chapter VI: Variants of Gregorio Cortez
  • Chapter VII: Gregorio Cortez, a Study
    • The variants
    • Narrative style
    • Change and development
    • Versification, rhythm, and structure
    • The use of the imperfect and of syllable-supplying devices
    • Corrido imagery in Gregorio Cortez
    • The corrido language
    • Conventions which the Border corrido has borrowed from Greater Mexico
    • Conventions which have been developed in El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez
  • Chapter VIII: A Last Word
• Bibliography
• Index

About the Author

AmÉrico Paredes (1915–1999) was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and founded the UT Center for Mexican American Studies.

Reviews

To see why Gregorio became a folk hero, one only has to remember that in practice there was one law for Anglo-Texans, another for Texas Mexicans. The chase, capture, and imprisonment of Cortez are high drama.... This is an extraordinary book. (Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin)